Throughout the years, a main focus providing services to consumers has been convenience. It is quite clear to even the most simplistic marketing analyst that the more convenient you can make a service to the consumer, the more likely the consumer will partake in the service. It is on this foundation that the majority of Internet services are based.
The Internet is not always the final answer in providing convenience to the consumer. In some instances, consumers are simply reluctant to conduct business over the Internet due to a variety of reasons, such as fear of losing confidentiality, resistance to relying on modern technology and sometimes, just stubbornness. Thus, there has been, is and remains a need in the art for providing face to face, plain old ordinary customer service.
The banking and credit industry is particularly poised in this predicament. Consumers that are engaging in financial transactions or receiving financial services often times prefer to deal with an institution rather than the Internet. Thus, marketers are still challenged with increasing the convenience at which such services are offered.
One avenue that has been extensively explored for providing financial services is through merchants. Consumers typically are willing to trust a merchant that is offering a financial service. This is evident in the fact that nearly every department store offers a credit program to their customers.
Typically, merchants are limited to the types of financial services that they can provide. This limitation can be due to a variety of factors including the cost that the merchant must incur to provide the service, the technological complexities of providing the service, and the training required for the merchant's employees. However, anyone that has completed a marketing 101 class will agree that the more services a merchant can offer, the more foot traffic the merchant will generate and thus, the higher probability the merchant will get a sale.
Thus, there is a need in the art for a solution that enables a merchant to provide multiple financial services to its customers that is commercially feasible to the merchant, not overly complicated from a technological perspective, and that minimizes the training required for the merchant's employees.
For services that are related to financial transactions and the issuance of credit, it is very important to maintain correct information about a customer, such as the customers address and contact information. In our mobile society, home addresses and mailing address are in constant need of updating. For the credit industry, this can be quite problematic due to the fact that the ability to collect drastically decreases in proportion to the lack of ability to contact a debtor. Traditionally, contact information has been updated through the mail. When paying a bill, customers are offered the opportunity to fill out a change of address form to send along with the payment. Once received, this information can be entered in on the user's behalf. This technique for updating address information is problematic in that it is totally reliant upon the customer being responsible to send in the change of address information and the turn-around time for obtaining, entering and implementing the change of address can be on the order of weeks. Such delays can easily result in bills being sent to wrong addresses or a total loss of contact with a debtor. Even for delays of one billing cycle, credit companies can easily lose significant amounts of income.
On Oct. 26, 2001, President Bush signed the USA Patriot Act (USAPA) into law. Under the USAPA, there are requirements imposed on financial service providers or institutions are required to have a correct address on a customer prior to opening an account. Thus, there is a need in the art for a technique that allows customer information to be updated in a more reliable and expeditious manner.